Chris Lombardi puts defense and security under the spotlight, as he shares his takes on recent NATO and EU cooperation and provides insight into the company’s own long-term strategic partnerships in Europe.

Three trends are currently driving the global electricity sector: decarbonization, decentralization and differentiation. Utilities are making significant contributions to mitigate carbon emissions, while a technology revolution is …

The article cites health campaigners as saying that the pictorial warnings are “as intricate as the logos and could also be used to identify counterfeits”. While health campaigners often make this argument, the statement is incorrect and its implications misleading. Pictorial health warnings pose no real barrier to counterfeiters: they can be produced (and reproduced) using low-cost printing techniques from equipment readily available in the market and four basic print colours. As such, they are not comparable to branding in their complexity.

A modern cigarette pack is a sophisticated product with multiple brand features that forces counterfeiters to overcome costly barriers in order to produce convincing copies. The printing techniques for the branding on the packs employ enhanced design features, such as embossing, debossing, hot-foil stamping and UV Varnish, amongst others, and typically use between eight and ten unique colours from state-of-the-art printing equipment. Moreover, each colour comes from special ink sourced from a limited, traceable supply chain.

It is, therefore, the branding on a cigarette pack that counterfeiters find difficult to replicate and that allows retailers and the public to differentiate between real and counterfeit products.

Prevention through deterrence is the first line – and the best line – of defence against counterfeits. Pictorial health warnings cannot be relied upon as an effective anti-counterfeiting measure.

Given the potentially far-reaching and possibly unintended consequences of the present ‘plain packaging’ debate, this is a point that needs to be understood and considered.